Chapter published in:
The Social Dynamics of Pronominal Systems: A comparative approach
Edited by Paul Bouissac
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 304] 2019
► pp. 219–234

Pronouns in an 18th century Chinese novel

What they tell us about social dynamics

| National University of Singapore
The Chinese language has a five-thousand-year history, and one can track the evolution of pronouns from historical to contemporary texts. Some historical Chinese pronouns constitute complex systems. In Chinese, address systems are a more obvious indicator of politeness (Kádár 2007). However, the subtle use of pronouns in Chinese to show (im)politeness has gone quite unnoticed. In the 18th Century novel Dream of the Red Chamber, one needs to understand the social dynamics of the contexts in which the pronouns are used to know why plural pronouns are used to refer to single referents and second-person and third-person singular pronouns are used to refer to more than one referents.The novel features the complex social hierarchy within an influential family where each person is mindful of his position in the web of social strata. Therefore, it is vital to understand the social hierarchy of the speakers, interlocutors, and referents to understand why such discrepancies occur. These discrepancies between pronouns and referents indicate the attitudes of the speakers towards the people they are speaking or referring to, functioning like a social index showing attitudes in the context of hierarchical social networks.
Keywords: Chinese, pronoun, switched numbers, attitude, distance, power
Published online: 23 July 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.304.09lee
References

References

Primary sources

Cao Xueqing
1993 Hong Lou Meng. Beijing: Renming Wenxue Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Hawkes, David
Trans. 1977 The Story of the Stone. Vols 1–3. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Liang, Zhangju 梁章钜.
2002 Chengwei Lu 称谓录 (‘Record of addressing’).Google Scholar

Secondary sources

Biq, Yung-O.
1991 The multiple uses of the second-person singular pronoun ni in conversational Mandarin. Journal of Pragmatics 16: 307–321. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Braun, Friederike
1988 Terms of address: Problems of patterns and usage in various languages and cultures. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Roger, Gilman, Albert
1960 The pronouns of solidarity and power. In Style in Language, ed., by Thomas Sebeok, 253–276. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Xinren
2013 ‘Polysemous’ per self-referring forms in Honglou Meng. In Chinese Discourse and Interaction: Theory and Practice, ed. by Yuling Pan, and Dániel Z. Kádár, 292–309. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan
2008 Reflections on impoliteness, relational work and power. In Impoliteness in Language ed. By Derek Bousfield, and Miriam Locher, 17–44. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cysouw, Michael
2003 The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
De Cock, Barbara
2011 Why we can be you: the use of 1st person plural forms with hearer reference in English and Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 2762–2775. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Friedrich, Paul
1972 Social context and semantic feature: The Russian pronominal usage. In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The ethnography of Communication, ed. by John Gumperz, and Dell Hymes, 270- 300). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1967 Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Behaviour. New York: Anchor Books, Garden City.Google Scholar
Grasso, June M., Jay P. Corrin, and Kort, Michael
2004 Modernization and Revolution in China: From the Opium Wars to World Power. New York: M. E Sharpe.Google Scholar
Gu, Yueguo
1990 Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics 14 (22): 237–257. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael, and Carl Hinze
2003 A metalinguistic approach to deconstructing the concepts of ‘face’ and ‘politeness’ in Chinese, English and Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 35 (10,11): 1581–1611. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Head, Brian F.
1978 Respect degrees in pronominal reference. In Universals of Human Language, Vol. 3, ed. By Joseph Greenberg, 151–211. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Helmbrecht, Johannes
2003 Politeness distinctions in second-person pronouns. In Deictic Conceptualization of Space, Time and Person. (Pragmatics and Beyond 112) ed. By Friedrich Lenz, 185–203. Amsterdam: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2005 Politeness distinctions in pronouns. In The World Atlas of Language Structures ed. by Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil, and Bernard Comrie, 186–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2015 A typology of non-prototypical uses of personal pronouns: synchrony and diachrony. Journal of Pragmatics 88: 176–189. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet, and Stephanie Schnurr
2005 Politeness, humour and gender in the workplace: Negotiating norms and identifying contestation. Journal of Politeness Research 1 (1): 121–149. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hong, Beverly
1985 Politeness in Chinese: Impersonal pronouns and personal greetings. Anthropological Linguistics, 27: 204–213.Google Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z.
2007 Terms of (Im)politeness. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University.Google Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z. and Michael Haugh
2013 Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kitagawa, Chisato, and Adrienne Lehrer
1990 Impersonal uses of personal pronouns. Journal of Pragmatics, 14 (5): 739–775. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Laberge, Suzanne and Gillian Sankoff
1979 Anything you can do. In Syntax and semantics, vol. 12 Discourse and Syntax ed. by Thomas Givón, 419–440. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Cher Leng
2012 Self-presentation, face and first-person pronouns in the Analects. Journal of Politeness Research 8: 75–92. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lee-Wong, Song Mei
2000 Politeness and Face in Chinese Culture. Fraunkfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Locher, Miriam A.
2004 Power and Politeness in Action: Disagreements in Oral Communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Locher, Miriam A., and Richard J. Watts
2005 Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research 1 (1): 9–33. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lü Shuxiang
1985 Jindai hanyu zhidaici (Anaphora in Modern Chinese). Shanghai: Xuelin Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Mao, LuMing R.
1996 Chinese first-person pronoun and social implicature. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 7 (3, 4): 106–128.Google Scholar
Maitland, Karen, and John Wilson
1987) Pronominal selection and ideological conflict. Journal of Pragmatics 11: 495–512. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mühlhäusler, Peter, and Rom, Harré
1990 Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Myers, Greg, and Sofia Lampropoulou
2012 Impersonal you and stance-taking in social research interviews. Journal of Pragmatics, 44 (10): 1206–1218. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Okamoto, Shigeko
1999 Situated politeness: manipulating honorific and non-honorific expressions in Japanese conversations. Pragmatics 8 (2): 51–74. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pan, Yuling, and Dániel Z. Kádár
2011 Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael
2003 Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and communication 23: 193–229.Google Scholar
Stewart, Miranda
2001 Pronouns of power and solidarity: The case of Spanish first-person plural nosotros. Multilingua 20 (2): 155–169. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, Helen
2000 Rapport management: A framework for analysis. In Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–46. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
2005 (Im)Politeness, face and perceptions of rapport: Unpackaging their bases and interrelationships. Journal of Politeness Research 1 (1): 95–119. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stirling, Lesley, and Lenore Manderson
2011 About you: Empathy, objectivity and authority. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1581–1602. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Li
1954 Zhongguo Yufa Lilun. Beijing: Zhonghua Shudian.Google Scholar
Zhu, Ziqing
1934 [1963] Ni Wo [You, I]. Hong Kong: Taiping Shuju.Google Scholar